


Infinitesimal

by Aphoride



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Boys In Love, Cheating, Community: HPFT, Dumbledore Knows Everything, F/M, Gay Character, Heart Murmur, Hemophilia, Letters, M/M, Overprotective Older Brother, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Romance, Stargazing, serious angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 19:42:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4361798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphoride/pseuds/Aphoride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He and I, we were infinitesimal.</p>
<p>James/Regulus</p>
            </blockquote>





	Infinitesimal

Infinitesimal  
  
This is the story of a night which never ends, stretching out on and on and on into time, spanning the length of ages and the single-second width of history, as everything does. It is a story which lingers, in ways, in me, and a history I’m still living, even now.  
  
As it is, I’m sitting in the lounge, writing this on the coffee table, and I’m not sure why, only that I think I should. I think it needs to be told – to you, to Sirius, to Remus. To Harry, if it comes to that, if you want to tell him.  
  
I hope not – that it doesn’t come to that, that is. I’m not ready to die; still so much left to do, so much history left to write, and Dark Lords to defeat. The thought of leaving you alone, too, with Harry and no one else, really, because Sirius and Peter and Remus are more my friends than yours, no matter how much you love them and they love you, and all of our parents are gone.  
  
He’d have been alone too. In a different way, but the same too.  
  
You’re frowning at this now – your forehand scrunched up and your lips pursed, that expression which always makes me smile because, really, no one frowns as beautifully as you do – and I don’t blame you. Inside your head, no doubt you’re running through everyone you know, everyone we both know, trying to find someone who fits, wondering why I’m not thinking about Sirius, or Remus, or Peter instead.  
  
You won’t find him there, not inside your photo-album memory. He’s not there, probably never has been, though you met him – you even liked him, clucked your tongue and sighed about how sad it all was.  
  
I doubt you’ll like him once this is over, though, once you know everything, the whole sordid truth of it – because it is sordid, really, and it is wrong of me and my father would clip me round the ear if he knew, and Sirius would kill me himself for it if he could.  
  
In my imagination, I can see your eyes widening, your mouth curving, dropping into a small ‘o’ shape and even as I write, my hand shaking a little on the page, I feel myself give a small, self-mocking smile.  
  
Yes, him. I know, I know. Stupid and foolish and thoughtless. Of all people, really, I should have known, but it’s funny, isn’t it, how things turn out sometimes? How things end up being nothing like what you thought or how you planned?  
  
Lily, I’m going to tell you everything, I swear it – the whole truth of everything – because you deserve to know, and I don’t want you to believe in a lie or a dream of me if when I’m gone. It’s not fair on you, and maybe it’s not fair on him, and truthfully, this is only because I’m not brave enough or good enough to sit you down here one night when Harry’s asleep, when Sirius and Remus and Peter have commandeered babysitting, and confess it to you myself.  
  
I’m so sorry, honestly I am. You have to believe me when I say that, at least. I never meant to hurt you, really, and I never meant to do either of you a wrong, in any way, and I understand if you hate me after this, if you cry and scream and shred my shirts (just not the cream one, with the initials on the collar – it was my dad’s), just please, please don’t destroy this. Not until you’ve finished anyway.  
  
Oh, and Lily – I did love you. I do love you. It’s not that I don’t, it’s not that you’re not everything to me. Never that. Never anything like that, I swear.  
  
So, I suppose now I should start at the beginning. It’s how all things start, isn’t it? With a beginning, going through to a middle, then to an end...  
  
I don’t remember how it began, really – I probably should; it’s the kind of thing people want to know: ‘when did it start?’, along with ‘when did it end?’. Instead, it didn’t start with a jump, like a car or a broom when you push off into the air; it was a slow, building sort of thing, a flame as it grew and grew, licking its way up a piece of wood, sucking in air, until it bloomed into sight, hungry and bright and so very much alive.  
  
By the time I was aware of it, it existed and it thrived, greedy and wanting and hot in the base of my stomach.  
  
It was strange, discovering one night that all those little flutterings and twistings in my stomach, my tendency to watch him, how he did things, who he talked to and where he went, when he smiled and every single time he laughed, that they meant something. Something more than simple friendliness, more than the protective feelings of an older brother – even if, to him, I was nothing like that, a Judas, really.  
  
I thought I wanted to be friends – that was my aim, at least consciously. Subconsciously, I guess I was already gone, wrapped around his finger as tightly as a lock of his hair, round and round and round without him even realising he’d done it.  
  
The night air was cool at the top of the Astronomy Tower, nipping and biting at my cheeks and hands, digging through my flesh into my bones with a cold which seemed ready to freeze my eyelashes. Outside a thin line of snow was falling, flakes breathed out from the clouds above, covering the parapet and the stone flags in a blanket as delicate as spider’s web – or more so, since it crunched and shattered underneath my feet.  
  
Round the corner, just far enough that he was out of sight the door should anyone come looking, he was sitting on a parapet, looking up at the sky.  
  
If Sir Cadogan hadn’t told me someone was up there, I would never have thought to look. I’d have never have found him, and none of this would probably ever have happened.  
  
“You should probably get down from there,” I told him, my voice loud in the silence. “Don’t want to fall off.”  
  
His lip curled slightly – upwards, maybe, or downwards; the movement was too quick and too small for me to tell. Still, I noticed all the same, and I wondered later which it had been.  
  
“Don’t worry, Potter, if I fall no one will blame you,” he drawled, haughty and bored and faintly, ever so faintly, bitter.  
  
He was lonely, that was all; it showed in every line on his face, every muscle in his body, and flowed off him in waves, pulsing with a strength which surprised me. It was all it was, so simple and so common in these times when people outside were dying and loss fostered it like mould in damp, and yet something about it with him drew me in.  
  
Before I knew it, before I had even really thought about what I was doing, I’d pulled myself up onto the parapet, shoulder-height and wide enough to seat two of me, side-by-side, and sat opposite him. It wasn’t quite big enough for us both to sit there with legs stretched out, feet pressed up against the sides, and mine dangled awkwardly over the side; he didn’t move to let me in.  
  
Opposite me, he just raised an eyebrow, finally tearing his gaze away from the sky to look at me, seemingly completely unbothered by the dusting of snow piling up on his shoulders and his hair, a coating of sugar on dark waves and black velvet.  
  
I shivered as I leaned back against the stone, feeling the damp of crushed snowflakes seeping through into my jumper and shirt, down onto my skin and trickling down to my waist and below.  
  
Regulus just smirked; unlike me, he’d brought a cloak, rich and warm.  
  
Beneath the smirk, though, there was a wariness and a nervousness, as though he expected me to shove him over the edge at any moment.  
  
“Bit late to be stargazing, isn’t it?” I asked; finding the silence uncomfortable and filled with a tension I hated. I never was able to keep quiet for long, as you know well; my mum blames my dad for it and my dad blames my mum. In turn, they both blame Sirius, too.  
  
Really, there’s probably truth in all of it somewhere.  
  
“No,” he responded simply, the answer curt and shorter and I felt something in my stomach clench and thud, like a stone falling off a window-ledge.  
  
Briefly, I closed my eyes, swallowing and trying to summon up some of the courage I was supposed to possess, the courage his brother always told me I had in spades, to try and talk to him – nothing else, just talk. It was amazing, really, how easily he could cut me to the quick, swift and sure and harsh, seemingly without thought.  
  
Truthfully, it felt like I was completely exposed to him, though he was a mystery to me.  
  
Nothing else was said that night, nothing more was done – at that point, I was very much still yours and only yours, and I didn’t understand really what I was feeling for him, both a boy and not mine – and I left him there, sitting on the ledge, silent and lonely, looking up at the stars above.  
  
That encounter, brief and tense though it was, only served to fuel my fascination with him. Even as I held your hand throughout dinner, laughing with Sirius about his most recent prank, I found myself glancing at him more and more often, seeking him out and finding him, always finding him, so easily. He never noticed me watching him, never realised how much I wanted to know him, to know him better than I did already.  
  
It’s hard to explain, and completely different to how I felt about you, though equal in measure, in that sense. Unlike you, he wasn’t open, or friendly, or talkative; he was quiet and aloof and hardly ever deigned to acknowledge others around him. He wasn’t even rude – you remember, I’m sure, how unfailingly polite he was in prefects’ meetings – he was just… cold.  
  
Sirius’ exact opposite, and yet they could never have succeeded in saying they weren’t brothers; it was written too clearly in their physicality. Black genes run strong.  
  
Then, the second time – the week after, the same place, the same time.  
  
This time, Sir Cadogan said nothing to me, I walked up the stairs automatically, almost, wondering if he’d be there again, wanting, perhaps, to talk to him again, to finish the conversation we’d never really started. He was my best friend’s little brother – nearly my brother, in a way – and that meant something to me.  
  
Well, I knew it meant something. I had no idea what; I’d never had brothers before, or sisters. How was I supposed to know what brotherly affection felt like specifically?  
  
As soon as I slipped outside, closing the door behind me, I rounded the corner and looked up. He was there, in the corner of my eye, the same black velvet cloak over his shoulders, this time facing away from me.  
  
I wondered whether or not he’d thought about me coming – if I would, if I’d tell a professor about his visits.  
  
“Cloudy tonight – not so good for stargazing,” I remarked, strolling over to him casually, my hands stuck in my pockets, as much for protection against the cold as for looking cool.  
  
“What do you want?” he asked after a pause, still studiously studying the sky above, as though trying to see through the clouds up to the stars, as though they appeared through the layer of water and ice to his eyes alone.  
  
Magic has done weirder things, I suppose – though the likelihood was, really, that it was a habit, that he didn’t need a clear sky to see the stars, to know where they were, symbols of his family. Sirius had long told me how they were taught as children, in the fields behind their uncle’s house, lying on their backs and trying not to fall asleep, learning the names and the stories, mapping the arcs and lines of the constellations.  
  
“Nothing much,” I replied, my mouth dry and suddenly unsure about my voice – my tone, my pitch, the volume, the stresses on syllables and pronunciation. “Just thought you might want to talk.”  
  
That earned me a look which attempted to be, wanted to be incredulous, but in the end was far more just confused. It was sweet, really: in that moment, I was reminded, however stupid it was, that he was young. Sixteen, then, young for his year, and not due to be seventeen for another six months.  
  
“Talk?” he repeated, the usual note of scorn in his voice replaced by bewilderment and a faint tremor of shock. “What would we talk about?”  
  
“I dunno,” I shrugged, scuffing one shoe against the stone floor, watching as dust, fine and almost white in the dark, coated itself onto the toe. “Stuff, I guess? Why, don’t you want to?”  
  
He looked at me, then, and Lily, I’ve never felt so obvious in my life – and I didn’t know what was obvious. With a single look, hard and pointed and calculating, he ripped my chest open and dissected me then and there, from my heart to my brain and everywhere in between, poking at my soul, almost. It felt like judgment, more than anything else, reminiscent of Dumbledore when Pads and I had been called to his office before and that sense that you almost didn’t need to speak, he knew everything already.  
  
“Okay,” he nodded, slowly, still watching me, and I grinned reflexively. “What kind of stuff?”  
  
“Er… stars?” I suggested feebly, giving a half-hearted sort of smile, knowing it was stupid, too obvious. There were a hundred and one other things we could talk about, after all – Quidditch or music, history or Charms or teachers and housemates – but of course, being me, I had to go for the foolish option.  
  
Charmingly foolish, you called me once. You always did know me so well, even when you said you hated me.  
  
My heart beat once, twice, three times in the quiet. I could feel each one, strong and fierce, a horse kicking in my chest, and it seemed almost as though I might burst if he didn’t say anything. Then, finally, he nodded again, the same nod, almost suspicious, in a way, and my heart jumped and softened, returning to normal. Almost to normal, really.  
  
“The Spring skies will be coming soon,” he said, his voice quiet, returning to watching the sky, the clouds thinning ever so slightly, whole layers of them being torn off, stripped off by the night wind, nothing down here but a mile up had all the force of a storm. “The first stars of the season are always the best. You should see them sometime.”  
  
There was something there, a meaning I couldn’t put my finger on, a suggestion of something I didn’t really get. Perhaps if he’d been a girl, if he hadn’t been the first boy I’d ever really thought about like I did, if he hadn’t been so damned forbidden, maybe I’d have realised what it meant.  
  
Stars at night: a date, romance. Not friendship, not stilted conversation; covert kisses, soft giggles and intertwined fingers.  
  
As it was, he wasn’t any of those things, and I was oblivious, still convinced that because I was dating you, because I loved you, that was all there was to romance and love, there was no room for anything else, and so, I made sure to smile and say,  
  
“You want to see them together?”  
  
That, then, is the story of how I asked Regulus Black on a date, without meaning to – and how, knowingly, he accepted.  
  
This is probably the point where you want to put this down. The parchment is shaking in your hands, you’re angry, you’re upset, because you know where this is going now – even if you didn’t believe it before, you can guess now and you hate me for it. You hate us both for it.  
  
I don’t blame you for it; I would never blame you for it. Everything that happened, I instigated; everything that happened, he followed. Neither one of us was unwilling, was duped or convinced or seduced, and that makes it all the worse.  
  
Don’t blame him, please. Whatever it sounds like, however much he knew about you and I, however aware of us he was, he was lonely and young and almost desperate for someone. I just happened to be there.  
  
He was lost, Lily, more than you can believe. Then, in a way, he became found.  
  
Soon enough, the winter skies turned into spring, constellations shifting out of our view as the world beneath us turned, and I found myself going up the stairs again – a thousand steps to see something I’d never really understood or cared about, with someone I still didn’t really know but wanted to. It hadn’t been a long wait, just enough that I was half-convinced he’d have changed his mind, he wouldn’t show and I’d sit there on my own, staring out into the darkness, seeing nothing and feeling nothing.  
  
Pushing open the door, I followed the same path round the corner, my feet carrying me without direction, to see a thick blanket, probably green in normal light, spread on the ground – one of the ones we’d used in Astronomy when starting off and our necks were easily cricked from gazing through telescopes for hours on end.  
  
He was there before me, as always, lying on it, cloak forgotten in favour of a jumper and shirt, the white collar almost translucent in the pale light. Somehow there, he looked almost ethereal, holy in a way, and I felt my mouth dry and my hands grow sticky with nerves. For a moment, I wondered what I was doing, why I was here, what I meant to do, and something inside me whispered of things I shouldn’t want to do, not normally – touches, exploratory and soft, coaxing him out of his infernal silence.  
  
I should have run, really, should have run straight back down the stairs, fear and a sort of twinned confusion and understanding clouding my stomach, to bed and to the promises I had made to you. Once a Gryffindor, though, and so I walked forwards again.  
  
“Hey,” I murmured, loathe to disturb him, kneeling down on the blanket – I wanted to lie down, but it felt like too much, too soon. “So where are these stars, then?”  
  
There was a look, incredulous and faintly scornful, and then laughter – soft, genuine and surprisingly light. A small smile tugged at my mouth, sheepish, and I had to give in. I’d never heard him laugh before, never even really seen him laugh, let alone smile. Slytherin as a house wasn’t really big on overt happiness.  
  
“Lie down and you’ll see them,” he told me, his expression making it quite clear what he wanted, and the coquettishness of it all made my heart beat double-time, my eyes lingering on his mouth, on his chest and waist.  
  
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move – this was big, I knew it, could feel it – and the indecision, sudden sense of what am I doing, must have shown on my face because the coy light vanished from his eyes and aloof was quickly plastered over flirtatiousness. He wasn’t quick enough, though, to hide the hurt in his eyes.  
  
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said, the words short and sharp and curt, looking away.  
  
Slowly, trying not to make too much noise or rumple the blanket too much, I laid down, shifting my legs awkwardly until they were flat on the ground, my head facing upwards, the map of the heavens laid out before my eyes.  
  
“Hey, Reg,” I nudged him gently. “Show me the stars. You’ll have to be patient, though – I’m hopeless.”  
  
He did. Slowly, his voice quiet, his hand guiding mine to point out each one, he showed me the stars as I’d never really seen them before. Arcturus and Antares, family names, Castor and Pollux in the twins – his father, he said, and what would have been the name of an uncle, but the baby hadn’t lived – Spica, at the base of Virgo’s curve, and Regulus, the heart of the lion, winking down at his namesake.  
  
His fingers were warm, strangely soft, and he held my hand so delicately, as though if he squeezed I might break.  
  
When the stars began to fade, I looked over at him, propping up on one elbow, looming over him; he didn’t move, not even a twitch. Up close, he was handsome, reminiscent of Sirius but completely different at the same time (which was a blessing; the idea of kissing Sirius was really not nice at all, and being reminded of him then wouldn’t have helped): sharper cheekbones, thinner and slighter, almost beautiful rather than anything else. Like a fine china vase, or a sculpture made of crystal.  
  
His eyelashes, though, were dark and long when they fluttered shut, a dusky brush over pale skin, and when I kissed him he sighed into my mouth, tangling a hand in my hair even as I moved to cup his head, warm and sweet and strangely demanding.   
  
Over the weeks which followed, our nightly meetings increased to twice a week, then to three. I’ve always wondered, did you ever think it was weird that I volunteered for all the night shifts, that he always signed up for them when you pinned the list of slots on the board in the prefects’ room?  
  
Probably not, I guess. You always trusted me implicitly. Faith and kindness: your two best and most endearing qualities. I suppose in this I abused both, really.  
  
We’d lie there, on the blanket – moving through an endless cycle of colours, from red to green to blue and back again – I’d hold his hand, his head resting on my shoulder, and slowly, it moved from him pointing out the stars and the constellations, Hydra and Antilla and Hercules, drawing lines in the air with both our fingers, as though simply connecting up dots, to talking about anything, and kissing.  
  
I found out things about him: that he was a die-hard Puddlemere United fan, and always asked for match tickets for his birthday each year; that he spoke French fluently and wanted to live there if he could; that his torso was littered with little red and pink bruises, his legs too – evidence of where he’d walked into a table, where he’d struggled to lift a heavy pile of books and balanced them on one leg, sending the corners digging into his skin. Evidence, in truth, that something had gone wrong somewhere, that his grandmother’s blood had polluted his; marring purity, his grandfather had claimed once.  
  
He hated the last one, and hadn’t really wanted to tell me. I’d think he was weak and pathetic, he told me afterwards, biting his lip, but he’d thought he had to, so I didn’t assume it was his parents.  
  
In turn, I told him about my heart murmur – inherited from my father, who’d got it from his mother – how they’d said I shouldn’t play Quidditch with it, that it might be too dangerous, that if something happened, it could just fail, killing me long before the war even started. Taking his hand, I pressed it down, flat, over my chest, over my heart, and waited, watching him, for him to feel the beat, uneven and off-kilter, as though every other second, it shuddered.  
  
Then, slowly, he had smiled and leaned in to kiss me, and I think, now I can look back, that that was when I fell in love with him.  
  
Maybe it can’t be pinned down to one single moment; more a succession of little things, little moments which build up and up and up to create the sense that without that person, you’d have nothing, but I don’t know, really. Who can know? Love is impossible to understand, in almost every way.  
  
We never went inside, not where or when anyone could see us – the entirety of he and I was spent skulking around in shadows, half-afraid of being found, half-hoping we’d be found, watching the stars and creeping down corridors to the Prefects’ bathroom, to the Room of Requirement (my find, and only that here. It was a place for me and him and just us. No masks, no shields, nothing else) and the stages it would set out for us.  
  
With my invisibility cloak over both of us, we were safe from all the dangers of the rest of the world.  
  
You always said I had a penchant for broken things, for things I could save – an addiction to it, almost, a hero’s complex, in every way. I wanted to save him, Lily, I wanted to take him away from the world his family wanted to send him into – dark, dank and dangerous, filled with monsters which would make anyone’s blood run cold and set their limbs to trembling – and bring him somewhere warm and happy and innocent, where he didn’t have to worry about honour and secrecy, the constant threat of shame and disinheritance.  
  
Is that wrong? I don’t want to think so. I tried, at least, and my intentions were good, if not the method.  
  
Spring marched on towards summer, towards the realities of war, with all the fear and worry and plaintive hope that implies, and I began to spend more and more time with him, hiding away from the world in daylight now, curled up together in the Room of Requirement, cotton sheets wrapped around us like a shield. I didn’t want to leave him, not here, not on his own, not without me, and so I lied, I lied endlessly to you and to Sirius and Remus and Peter, saying I was in the library.  
  
Studying. Studying something, yes, but not books, not spells and theories and dates, but him, every inch of him. How he always looked so serious when I pulled back from kissing him, lips red and eyes like the heart of a storm, how irritation would flash, sharp and fierce, whenever I treated him too gently, too delicately, and how his hands, lithe and slender, would flit over the plains of my body, almost wondrous in their exploration.  
  
At those times, I felt almost celestial myself, as though I could match him, glow for glow and glimmer for glimmer. I was infinite; he was infinite; we were both infinite.  
  
“Infinitesimal,” I told him, murmuring it into his hair one night, the whole breadth of the constellations spread out on the ceiling above us, stars smiling down on us with a soft, gentle shine. “That’s us.”  
  
I never thought then that we would end, never thought we’d stop or be parted, or anything like that. It didn’t seem possible then, in those times, and I was naïve enough to think that we’d be strong enough, good enough together to last, to forge the right path outside school.  
  
Dawn is coming here – it was only appropriate I wrote this for you at night, remembered him at night. In my life, you were the daylight, the person I could love then, openly and obviously, utterly unfettered by convention, by sides in a war, by secrets and truths we both hid. He was like the night, quiet and beautiful and wondrous in his own way, and I didn’t love him any less than you, even if we had to be secret, had to be short and sweet and simple.  
  
Yesterday, Professor Dumbledore came round – he had a letter in his hand, sealed and written in florid, looped handwriting I’d never seen before. He was sombre, looking almost old, and when he asked for Sirius to stay, for me to stay with him, just in case, it felt as though that moment had come – the one I’d told Regulus about moons ago, when something hits and hurts and my heart stops forever.  
  
The letter was from Regulus, written in his own hand – smooth and perfect, no ink stains, no crossed out words – three pages of history, of truths he’d wanted his brother to know before he died. Three pages of apologies and acceptance, finally, and admission that perhaps, just perhaps, blame had been shared, that he’d still loved him, still admired him.  
  
Sirius sank onto the sofa, his face in his hands and the letter on the table, his brother’s last words to him staring up at the ceiling, blank and unseeing, frozen in time, said and sent too late to change anything.  
  
I left him there, left Professor Dumbledore there, on the pretence of going to make tea, but really, really, I didn’t want Sirius to see me cry. I couldn’t let Sirius see me cry. I wasn’t supposed to love his brother, after all; Regulus hadn’t been mine to love, not in any proper sort of way.  
  
“James?” Professor Dumbledore had followed me into the kitchen, silent as always, and I wiped my tears on the back of my hand before turning to face him. “This is for you.”  
  
In this hands was a second letter, identical to the first one, but in the corner, where Sirius’ had said ‘S.B’, mine read ‘J.P’. As I took it, slowly, my hand was shaking, and it was no longer possible for me to avoid crying, to pretend I was doing anything else.  
  
“It will not heal completely,” Professor Dumbledore told me, quiet and gentle, as though he was just as aware as I was of Sirius next door, of how he’d hate me if he knew, and there was a sadness in his eyes which seemed to say he understood.  
  
He’d seen two wars then – how could he not?  
  
“But it will get easier to bear,” he finished, giving me one last, long look, patting my hand once, and then sweeping out of the room, the top of his hat brushing against the doorframe.  
  
“You bastard,” I heard, just after a small pop announced Dumbledore leaving, and I looked up, my eyes blurry, to see Sirius in the doorway, his face a mask of absolute fury, enough that it made me choke on my tears, horror blossoming like blood in water. “You bastard.”  
  
I couldn’t think of what to say, I couldn’t think of what to do, and, really, there wasn’t an excuse in the world I wanted to give. If he blamed me, so be it. Just not Regulus – Regulus was dead, he didn’t deserve to have his memory tarnished like that.  
  
There was a pause, the thud of steps across the floor, then hollow pain blooming across my cheek, morphing into sharp and throbbing in my nose, the sickening crack as the bone broke echoing in my ears. I could taste blood, spitting showers of red droplets onto the floor, and pressed a hand to my mouth, concealing a whimper.  
  
An hour later, when you arrived back – you remember this, I’m sure, since Sirius and I never fight, not like that anyway – you took my chin in hand and went about fixing the bruising under my eye, the bridge of my nose and the puncture in my lip. It didn’t take you long, and once you were done, wiping the remainders of the blood off my face, you looked at me, your green eyes wide and worried, and you squeezed my hand.  
  
“You can tell me, you know, whatever happened,” you said, so earnest and so true and honest, as you always had been, and I nearly cried again.  
  
You were always good, Lily, always so willing to see the good in others, to do the right thing no matter the cost, and you always deserved good in return.  
  
So that is why I’m here, that is why this is here – I’ll put it in an envelope, tuck it behind your grandmother’s pot on the mantelpiece – and why I think I wrote this, in the end. In a way, it’s for all of us in this: catharsis for me, the truth for you, and for him, well, for him the telling of a story which perhaps should always have been known.  
  
I want you to know, Lily, that no matter what you think of me after this, no matter how much you hate me, how much you regret everything, I did love you. I do love you. It’s just… well, I love him too and now he’s dead, so he and I only exist in me, only exist in this letter.  
  
Hopefully, they’ll last the war – these swirls of paper and ink – hopefully, they’ll last eternity, and then we’ll truly be infinite, preserved by history forever.


End file.
